Shameless Motordom: Rogues above all

“Fantasy, do not attempt. Cars can’t jump on trains.”

The bizarre thing is that, in this world. all cars would be stuck and buying this Nissan would give you nothing over a Honda Fit or any other car. The only people that seem to be moving are those that ditched their cars. And this is an ad for cars!

It’s like the subtitle should be “Nissan Rogue: drive as if you weren’t stuck using a car.”

Actually before car sharing became such a thing, I thought that car trains were the wave of the future. Cars would be smaller and lighter and probably all electric or gasoline electric, but for long highway drives, they would hop on the train. Because the cars would be smaller you would be able to have a greater density of cars for railcar than the car carriers have now. And actually, if the train made decent time, I think that there might be a market for this to Prince George and Calgary. But in the future, it seems like it will make more sense just to take yourself on the train and then get a car share at your destination. We might very well end up in a world where 50% of the cars on the road are shared, so there will cars available everywhere at all times, basically negating the need to take your own.

This Rogue commercial is just dumb fantasy, with empty promises of empty parking spots in abundance.

More disturbing is the companion Rogue commercial that shows city residents battling winter, symbolized by marauding snowmen. Cue our hero, with a grim and determined look on his face just like Hollywood commandos storming a terrorist stronghold. Our hero proceeds to use his Rogue to attack and destroy the marauders.

The underlying propaganda seems to instruct viewers to use their vehicles to attack and destroy the things that frustrate them. So if anything gets in the way of “faster, faster, get there faster”, like pedestrians or cyclists, causing you to feel set-upon or frustrated: Attack!

With the number of people killed and injured each year in Canada by motor vehicles, it seems bizarre to me that our society allows such pro-violence propaganda on its airwaves.